Advent Horizon

I've paraphrased here before (oh, don't make me cite -- yes, I read my own copyright disclaimer -- yes, I'm a hypocrite -- I'm always a hypocrite on Mondays) this idea that my college art-history teacher was fond of putting forth: (art) history is not a progress. That is to say, it is a mistake to view history as a linear story of increasing knowledge, awareness and accomplishment. The veracity of

Caravaggio's light

is in no way superior to the

Lascaux cave paintings

, simply because of its skilled naturalistic composition, any more than

Cubism

was way better than

Pop Art

. Our tendency is often to observe human history as a linear progress, be it toward improvement or destruction, probably because this perspective is linked to how our minds work. Yet it is not only a limited view, when it comes to culture it's an incredibly inaccurate one. Take the Library of Alexandria, as a grandiose example. If we take the progressive, linear perspective, its destruction would suggest that some time just prior to the 8th century, the world took a huge step backward in information and culture. However, its destruction also vastly decentralized the accumulation of recorded human knowledge and increased the value of its recording, leading perhaps even more commerce of ideas. It's just as possible that we moved forward as a result, or in any three-dimensional direction. Culture is too complex a category to be judged by two dimensions in my opinion, even without the element of time getting involved.

Now, I'm getting dizzy from the heights of my academic aspirations here (and nervous that someone will quickly push me off for too much theorizing), so I'll just get to the topic I had in mind.

I'm still slugging away at

Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock

, and I've just gotten to the section in Harold's (in everyone's) history at which sound entered film-making. There are more misconceptions about this extremely sudden phase of movie-making history than can be summarized. It seems as though the entire industry just went ahead and freaked right the hell out over it before it had even begun, and so lots of the information we have from this period smacks of over-simplification, movie-mag exclamation and collaborative ass-covering. Perhaps the most common misconception, and one I subscribed to until I actually -- you know --

researched

the topic, is that the famous comedians of the silent era mostly failed in sound because of vocal failings. For the longest time, I believed Buster Keaton had an awfully strong Bronx dialect that interfered with his "talkies." Not true. In character, and mostly in life, Buster had a very earnest, slightly dopey Midwestern American regionalism that actually served his deadpan expression awfully well. In spite of this obvious documented fact, not to mention his vaudeville upbringing (they talk in vaudeville, believe it or not), the myth of Buster's dialect is an irksome pervasion.

True, many film actors simply couldn't speak. Rugged cowboys had squeaky voices. Little darlings smoked five packs, unfiltered, per day. Yet if we have to summarize the cause of the upheaval of various actors' careers at this time, it would be more accurate to point to the bigger picture (pardon the pun) than the details. That is to say, with the advent of synchronized sound in movies, an entirely new form was created. We call them both "film," as though the material used to record these works was the defining feature, but it's a little like calling Picasso and van Gogh the same thing because they both put colors on flat surfaces.

Silent film had more in common with even dance and visual art than it did with talkies, then or now. Simply consider the fact that most major silent films were accompanied by live music. We tend to link silent film with film-in-general because we view movie-making as a progression, like technology, and because the two are similar in narrative devices. Even in this last commonality, however, the two are quite distinct. Silent films often suffered from too much story, whereas the bulk of popular American movies in the past 50 years have been largely driven by plot. It's a little difficult for modern audiences to grasp the idea of a "good" movie not necessarily relying on a "good" story, but in such a sceptical case, I point to two answers: a genre -- action movies -- and a specific film --

2001: A Space Odyssey

.

HOLD ON. I should have prefaced this by saying, beautiful as it is, I hate watching

2001

. I usually spend the whole time thinking to myself, s

elf, why did Kubrick have to give up on story-telling when he was so good at it?

It is a mistake, in my opinion, to rule out individual movies simply because of a lack of story.

2001

has a great deal in common with silent film, and if you're committed to the ideal of film-making being a visual medium, well, there you go. In my humble opinion, where Kubrick went wrong was in effectively abandoning comedy at the same time he began abandoning traditional narrative structure. 'Cause he was incredibly funny, too, and the profound loss of the silent film is in its comedies.

That's not to discredit the melodramas, historical pieces and fantasy films of the period in any way. I just mourn the comedies more. What seemed to happen was that the industry got itself all a'twitter about the money to be made (and lost) over the advent of sound, and in the momentum of all that most everyone lost sight of the forest for all the trees; including the actors. Well, I shouldn't say "everyone." Some persisted in the original form. Chaplin made a well-received silent film after sound entered the picture (so to speak), and I'm reading about Lloyd's struggles to adapt, too. Apparently he was started on a film when everything started switching over and, when he saw people's reactions to the novelty of sound, Lloyd felt that he'd better try to adapt. He dubbed and re-cut the film,

Welcome Danger

, in response to the demand. Apparently, this film includes a sequence of minutes of black screen as the characters are heard stumbling around in the "dark." This was either a desperate incorporation of the new technology, or something of a wry joke on the audience. I prefer to believe the latter explanation.

The differences between a silent film and a movie with sound are too numerous to summarize in total. The general category of things I miss the most from silent comedy, though, is the sight gag. We still have visual jokes in movies today, but they work differently. Our stories have become so much about the written word that everything springs from its parameters. Instead of beginning with images or ideas, jokes begin with language and behavior. Behavior is, in fact, the dominant action in movies today. It quickly became automatically more sophisticated to build stories from words, and eventually that prejudice became so ingrained that we became embarrassed by our active past. Even the greatest actors of the past seemed crude to our "modern" sensibilities, telling us too much, insulting our intelligence, their actions speaking too loudly, so much louder than our words.

Many argue that it's just a change of taste, that what we have now is what we need now in terms of culture. Maybe so. Lord knows I have a biased affection for times gone by when it comes to visual art and -- to a lesser degree -- music as well. Maybe it's pointless for me to insist that silent films are still relevant, still interesting and affective, and that we lose something good by losing "the name of action." Maybe. Still. Watch Harold's young man struggling to climb a high-rise in the need for success; then we'll talk.

Nobody Nose the Trouble I Seen

Remember way back in the day (which was

10/26/07

[in which I also first shared Zuppa del Giorno's idea for

a clown

R&J

]), when I mentioned wanting to script a clown film? Well, thanks to the gracious support of my fellow Exploding Yurts and Friend Davey, I've actually made a really strong start on it. As with most projects, I'm finding that actually working on it (as opposed to just going on and on about it as an idea I once had) is teaching me a lot and raising interesting questions. I thought I'd share some of these questions with you, Dear Reader, and solicit your opinions. Don't be shy if you're new to the Aviary. I'm an actor. The only thing I crave over approval is attention.

• Why is it so flim-flammed important to me to make something involving a red-nose clown? (This might be a bit rhetorical to start out with, but it's come up for me lately.) As I write, I see that more and more what I'm writing is something like a silent film, full of visual (physical) behavior and sight gags. And the silent film clowns pretty much proved that no nose is good nose. (Sorry, sorry. That...I really couldn't help it.) And everyone I talk to seems to respect that, from performers to non. Yet for some reason apart even from a clever plot device, I find the nose necessary.

• Is it important for me to track a specific learning curve for my character? In a conventional story, I would be inclined to quickly reply: Yes. This one, however.... In many of the silent films of yesteryear, the storytellers didn't so much worry about that, and many of such as these films are the funniest and most memorable. Buster Keaton was fond of saying that a good movie should be able to be summarized on the back of a postcard, and then extrapolated upon. That would certainly describe my conceit. It's just possible that the key is to tie it all together in the end in a satisfying way, and make the journey there as unpredictable as possible.

• Am I screwing myself by planning almost everything to be shot in public places?

• Should I start filming it as an episodic web series? I'm a little sick of these; everyone I know seems to be doing them, but few do them well (Friend Jason has a good one: Three Percent Enemies) and frankly it seems to me the market is a bit glutted. Still, I understand the appeal. Low budget, near-instant product and feedback, not to mention the ability to disguise oneself as a tourist whilst filming in public places. The outline I'm developing definitely lends itself to this format, too, divided as it is into segments comprised of short incidents of action. Still and all, I have my reservations.

I continue to write on it when I can. The trimming -- which is always the tricky part for me -- will be arduous, but perhaps made slightly easier by the constraints of time and money. Just like at the beginning of a collaborative process, I find myself relishing right now, when all is possible and the ideas fly about willy-nilly.

Update--4/2/08:Friend Davey seems to think that my movie is going to be optioned, taken over by mindless Hollywood moguls with warped priorities, and recast. At least I have to assume that's what he meant when he sent me this link. Thanks, Fuzzy.

Learing Glances

I was walking down the street the other day, on my way to il dayjobo, when I noticed a woman wearing boots with the kind of impossibly narrow and tall heel I see in anime, and believe to be a physical impossibility. She was having no trouble with them, and I considered asking her if she'd stilt with me some time, but then I noticed that the boots were black leather and patterned somewhere between a musketeer's and some kind of glam paratrooper. Aggressive boots. Which got me thinking.

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of concept-heavy theatre. There's a great temptation to do it with Shakespeare, and many arguments for and against such approaches. I like my concepts light, and with little-to-no discernible influence on the dramatic action of the play, especially when it comes to The Bard. After all, the play's the thing. Don't change the ending of

Hamlet

. Face my wrath. That having been said, and in honor of beginning work on a clown version of the

Romeo & Juliet

story, I decided to share what this woman's boots got me thinking on.

A lot's been done with

King Lear

. I was in a Suzuki-styled production set in a sanitarium (molto originale), there was a recent movie called

A Thousand Acres

that set the story in rural America of the 90s, and of course there's

Ran

, Akiro Kurosawa's feudal-Japan take on the thing. It's been done to death. Still, these things get done to death because they resonate. It's a play about the anguish of youthful ambition and oncoming mortality, and that don't ever go away for we humans. So it may be done to death, and my ideas may fall far short of being original, but a strong idea benefits from expression.

I wonder how the play would change if it were the love of sons rather than daughters that incited the action?

Lear

has so many family relationships through it that in many ways it's all about family, so I got to wondering about that. Suppose Cordelia, Regan and Goneril were -- I don't know -- Corey, Ronald and Gary. They act completely the same, but have wives (or an imagined future bride, in Corey's case) they involve, and their possession of the inheritance is more assured. Not sure if Lear should be a father or mother in this case, and not sure if that altogether matters.

Once I'm imagining the story this way, I immediately want to set it in an urban, contemporary environment. Perhaps amongst some entitled New York family. There is a film version of

Hamlet

that does this (with Ethan Hawke) and, in my opinion, fails spectacularly to play past the adaptation, but I feel the idea can be done well. In this environment, the sons can be fairly underspoken, manipulative and cruel and it seems quite normal to us; masterminds of business, or media. Their wives take more direct action, but this is fitting in a contemporary environment as well. I can also see Lear (be he or she) as descended to a homeless state very clearly in this setting, and wonder how all the nature imagery might translate to an urban environment.

From here I wonder what else I can alter without getting in the way of the story. Suppose Corey is gay, and that contributes to his estrangement from Lear. It would have to be done without issue; the idea would be to avoid making a statement not found in the original story, to just have it proceed as you expect, but this son is gay. Suppose, too, that Edgar and Edmund are the same person.

WHAT?! I know. I start to doubt myself here, too, but I want to play it out; to play

with

it. So deal.

Without having read the text in years, I wonder if it could be played in such a way that the E.s are one guy with a personality disorder. I imagine him vaguely as a guy taking prescription medication, young and volatile, freshly returned from treatment. Gloucester, his father, is thereby a bit more justified in his ineffectiveness. He's been through a lot with this kid, who has his good days and his bad, and Gloucester finds him, on his bad days, to be a different sort of bastard. Gloucester also must humor E. in his dual personas, in the hopes of bringing him through to sanity, but everyone around him doesn't know how to respond to this, because it isn't clear how much is his humoring and how much he's come to believe his son is divided in two.

If you're still with me now: Let's go produce, because you are a rare creature.

Gloucester, of course, has his eyes dashed out for him by Cornwall, Regan's husband. Or Caroline, Ronald's wife, in this case. It was the glimpse of those boots that got me thinking about it all. In the production I participated in, I played Cornwall, and we stamped out Gloucester's eyes with my heel. Those boots would make that choice far more ... shall we say, effective. The rest of the ideas rolled out from there.

Violence. Such a potent aphrodisiac for romancing the id.

By this point, of course, I have to imagine the show out of the context of the language. You can subvert some lines here and there to justify cross-casting genders, but combining two characters into one? Introducing contemporary psychological understanding to Mr. Bill Shake-Off-Subtext? No, no. I imagine it now as a contemporary retelling, rest assured. Still and all, William had some unshakable lines. There's no escaping, in the end:

"Howl howl howl howl howl! Oh, you are men of stones! Had I your tongues and eyes I should use them so the heaven's vaults should crack! She is gone, forever..."

Superheroes(TM) = Largely Impractical

I know it. You know it. We all know it. It's just like a lot of things people get really enthusiastic/defensive about. Take opera, for instance. As a genre, it's essentially about sociopathic people. Psychopathic, in some cases. If the goal of opera is to serve as a sort of emotional cautionary tale, we probably shouldn't identify with the characters as much as we tend to. If the goal of opera is to suggest we ought to live out our passions to their utter peaks and valleys, well, they probably shouldn't exhibit to us that the most likely result of this is maiming and/or killing yourself and/or loved ones. Try to express to an opera lover, however, that the form is all a bit inconsequential, and you better be prepared for a fight. With claws. And fangs. And arias.

Similarly, we fanboys (Uninitiated: this is slang for unabashed geeks of pop culture, usually comicbooks, video games and strange rock bands) will take umption with anyone claiming Superman(TM) is a silly thing. He is so NOT! And you know why? 'Cause he

rules!

There you have it. Fanboys can only argue with one another, because no one else takes the subjects as seriously as they do. This is well documented, even in the Aviary. When I posted an entry on

my belief that Batman(r) could beat Wolverine(c)

in a fight, I got the most number of responses ever. All of them from, to one extent or another, adamant fanboys. Or perhaps I should call them,

adamantium

fanboys! Get it? Do you get it? If you don't now, you probably never will.

Well, I have to come out as saying that I recognize the ridonkulous impracticality of the superhero(TM). This in no way lessens my enthusiasm for that aspect of my fantasy life, in my opinion, yet I know some of my fellow fanboys (henceforth, FBs) will feel betrayed. To them, I sincerely apologize. Try to understand: it's not you, it's me. I've just moved on. Priorities have shifted, and we'd only be holding

each other

back if we pretended like everything would eventually go back to being the same. I'd like us to still be friends, someday, down the road. When you're ready. You know, get together for the occasional Marvel(c) movie, maybe every once in a while Gchat over the possibility of maybe writing that cross-over first-person video game we always imagined . . .. But no more frenzied re-enactments of the fight between Hellboy and Sammael in the museum of antiquities. It, it would just be too hard. And weird. Admit it: It would feel weird, after all this.

For the purposes of this little essay, we must agree at least for the sake of argument that Superman is fairly ridiculous. He is excepted. He was the first, and probably the only conceivably successful superhero, what with all his powers. The only power he wasn't given is omniscience, and if the Highlander had really existed, Superman'd probably have that by now, too. Highlander: "I can see, everything! I know, everything! I--" ~Krchktk!~ Superman: "Oh geez. Here I am, just innocently

flicking beer nuts

in Cleveland, and one happened to fly to New York to decapitate you, Christopher Lambert. Sorry about that. Guess I'll be doing all the seeing/knowing/etc. from here on out. And the first thing I'm gonna do is flick beer nuts at the guys who will be responsible for

Highlander 2

."

(Yeah. I'm getting that geeky. Bail now, while you have a chance.)

The principal impracticality, of course, is that superheroes have to have a right-place/right-time habit akin to John McClane's wrong-place/wrong-time one to be even remotely effective. Only a few are prescient, and those, it seems, serve more to complicate storylines than to avert badness. Comicbook writers have been combatting this impracticality for years. Spider-Man has his "Spidey sense," various characters work as reporters, or computer gurus, etc., and I suppose Batman is just so smart that -- when the bat-signal isn't involved -- he can still calculate the likelihood of crime in a given radius. But it's all a little convenient. What's my point? Let me take it right off the bat with Bats, my favorite. He can't. Act. In. Enough. Time.

Especially

when the bat-signal is involved. I imagine it as if I were Bruce Wayne. (It's my 'blog--I can do what I want.) I see the signal, miraculously distinct against atmospheric water vapor, and I leap into costume, out the window, grapple-swing into my car (you know, the Batmobile?), drive to police headquarters, grapple-swing/shimmy up to the roof and . . . Two-Face is there, holding Gordon hostage, having already killed half an orphanage in the crime Jim had just gotten a warning about when he turned on the bat-lamp. Hell: Even a cell-phone call can't overcome the time it takes to get through midtown, no matter how late at night.

Another big one is the costumes. Even the most practical of superheroes have an iconic flambuoyancy that -- in reality -- would serve to somehow impede them to the point of their immediate death. Capes are nicely covered by

a sequence in

The Incredibles

, but you can also look at some of the fight scenes involving caped characters in movies. Talk about your liabilities. Even a Musketeer knows the first thing you do is whip that bad boy off and use it

one your opponent

. Capes are pure drama or, if you prefer, opera. "Okay," the FBs say, "Okay, but what about someone more pragmatic. Like Punisher." FBs, listen to me very carefully on this. He is a gun-toting vigilante who goes up against other gun-toters, mostly at night, and somehow thought it would be a good idea to imprint

an enormous

white

skull over his vital organs

. The only guy asking for it worse is Bullseye. There are myriad impracticalities involved in superhero costumes, from color to shape to size to generally advertizing complete vulnerability with either explicit contours of anatomy or, failing that, partial nudity. Suffice it to say: Impractical.

The final impracticality I will submit -- though there are many, many more -- is that, sadly, superheoes are real, real dumb. Or ignorant; take your pick. Now I don't want to generalize here . . . well yeah, I kind of do, but it's justifiable I think. Superheroes never seem to get anywhere. This comes of being born from a serial story-telling genre, obviously, once such a thing got mixed with good, old-fashioned American values. I mean, Dumas wrote serial adventure stories, and they still had an end. On top of the superhero struggle being self-perpetuated, it's also completely devoid of social insight -- meaning both insight into society and into social behavior. Every superhero is essentially anti-social. Even the squeaky-clean ones. Captain America is/was as "out" a superhero as one gets, his methods nurturing compared to some, yet he still operated by a creed devoid of any kind of social understanding. I don't know if this comes out of the stories having originally been written largely for teenage boys or what (see, I lack social insight, too), but I do know that power fantasies do not help the real world too durn much. Especially when it comes to social problems such as crime and tyranny.

This is why, as I come full-circle in my fandom, I prefer the 1989

Batman

film to the 1995

Batman Begins

. Burton's film makes no approach toward reality, yet takes the character very seriously. It is stylized, it is operatic, it is ultimately a more successful vision of the world a character like

Batman

occupies. I love

Batman Begins

for taking the character seriously again, re-upping it from the quasi-disdainful visions of Joel Schumacher, but in trying so hard to make Batman a believable, naturalistic character, Nolan has put him into a world in which he will never really belong. Chris, the cape can just be dramatic-looking camoflage; the ears can just be odd and frightening; Gotham can just be crime-ridden rather than economically depressed. There are plenty of movies that portray true societal problems, and a few that even suggest realistic, complex solutions. Superheroes were never meant to be sophisticated. They're meant to be audacious.

So. Why stand up for our men and women in tights? Well, they got to me young, they did. When I was a pre-teen (even maybe a "tween"), and in hungry need of some kind of guidance for how to weather the storms of growing up, something about Batman made sense to me. Hell: Superman got to me way before then. In some ways I've been indoctrinated, I suppose. Similar to the myths of older cultures, superheroes gave me a common language with my peers (the geeky ones, anyway) and even my parents to some extent, and they lit up the questions I always had about how to please people and deal with adversity in nice, bold, primary colors. And now? Well, now there's definitely a lot of escapism to my pursuit of more heroic adventures. Reading a comicbook is still the best way I can relax and go to sleep at night. But I would be lying, too, if I said I didn't occasionally wonder "What would Batman do?" when I'm faced with a difficult quandry. And sometimes, just sometimes, that wondering leads me through to previously unimagined possibilities.

Now if only I could get some of those wonderful toys . . .

Updating the Great Dialogue on March 10, 2008:

Friend Lea sent me an article, in which Michael Chabon (as he invariably does) bests me in getting to the heart of the costumed-hero issue. Read it

here

, at the New Yorker.

BE MORE FUNNY, CLOWN!

Friend Grey

has a great story about a teacher she had at Dell'Arte. The students there had to present an original, solo clown piece at least every week, and this teacher had a habit of viewing these pieces with a bucket of tennis balls by his side. If, in his opinion, the scene was not playing up to snuff, he would begin to peg these tennis balls at the performer, all the while shouting, "NOT...FUNNY...!" This became something of an inside joke as we worked on various

Zuppa del Giorno

shows. That, and our favorite, gentle way of telling someone their idea sucked: "Hm. That might be a great idea for

next year's

show...."

Friend Adam

(if I haven't completely alienated him with my response [and if my atrocious XBox playing hasn't alienated him, how could a caustic response to his opinions?]) posted a comment on my last entry regarding clowning (see

1/28/08

) that suggested that clowns are not funny, and that the reason for this is that they overwhelm, and turn a cathartic fear response into more of a Godzilla!-Run-for-your-meager-lives! response. I guess my entry didn't clear up any of Adam's feelings in this matter. Or, at least, I failed to extricate the word "clown" from the American stigma for it. To me, you see, "clown" is not a fair word to use to describe the circus or birthday clown. Hell: I don't even like "circus clown," because the word "circus" means a whole lot of different things, too, once you step outside the three rings of Barnum & Bailey.

So before I continue, let me break some things down. I see the stereotypical western clown as a kind of collage of comic traditions. (Note: THIS IS NOT A SCHOLARLY TEXT. For heaven's sakes, don't cite me as any kind of authority. It's been a decade since I took any kind of history class, and I didn't start taking an interest in clowning until about five years ago.) As I stated so elegantly, and ineffectively, on the 28th, the "birthday clown" has become a kind of grotesque take on some time-worn and valid comic traditions:

• The clothing. We know the score (scare?). Baggy pants. Enormous shoes. Funny hat. Usually layered clothing (vests, jackets, skirts, etc.), and usually brightly colored. Obnoxious, some would say, but put the same shapes--perhaps slightly muted--into tweeds and patches, and you're looking at "charming." At least, that's how most people described the likes of Keaton, Chaplin and Arbuckle. You've also got a low-status character, someone who's poor, who carries all he or she owns around with him or her. Take it back to 16th century Italy, and you're looking at one of the most beloved characters in comedy: Arlecchino (see shamelessly uncredited photo above). He was famous for being one of the funniest clever-servant characters, easily identified by his costume made almost completely of patches. That costume, once the character caught on in England, became represented by a body suit decorated in numerous diamond-shaped, multi-colored patches.
• The props. For our sworn enemy, the arsenal is awfully typical: horn, bludgeon, balloons, magic paraphenalia, etc. Prop comedy, too, has been much maligned of late, mostly owing to its not translating into a stand-up-comedy milieu very well. (Damn you, Gallagher! Damn you straight to hell!) I could write a whole entry on prop comedy alone -- and wouldn't my readership just spike over that? -- but for now suffice it to say that props, too, have suffered from senseless exaggeration. The term "slapstick" actually refers to a special bludgeon used in commedia (and probably dating back to the Romans) made of two flatish sticks banded together that, when properly struck, made an amped-up whacking noise. Such a device required a sense of musical timing for proper use, and had a transformative effect. Comedy's great for transformations, and not just of a balloon into a poodle.
• The violence. In our birthday clown, this is harmless stuff, mostly. Cream pies and inflated clubs. In this case, I witness mistake in toning down the consequences. It may seem odd to say, but birthday clowns glorify violence more than more traditional clowns do, in that the violence more often than not has virtually no effect. Therefore, they are free to gleefully enact it, and with complete disregard to the effects. It's not a great leap to imagine such a clown, then, accidentally committing horrible violence on one of us and doing it smilingly. Whereas, in most other forms, violence is regarded -- if also occasionally valued -- as something consequential. Cut Shylock, and not only will he bleed, he'll probably try to harvest your organs in revenge.
• The not-speaking. Boy, this one bugs people. It seems to make them feel -- now-a-days, anyway -- that the performer is an even more alien, pretentious thing. I can relate to this feeling, especially when the silence is being peddled to me by some well-intentioned, poorly (or not-at-all) trained moron. It's fun to mock a mime. They can't argue back. (I myself am guilty of making a mime joke part of a recent show, Prohibitive Standards, but it was a sure-fire punchline and under such circumstances I have no scruples.) But I have a theory about obnoxious silence. Silent performance irritates us when the performer is still shouting throughout, "Look at me! Look at me!" It's a fine distinction, but someone performing in silence with a more inviting subtext, regardless of how much they may want you to look at them, is really complimentary to an audience. It's fascinating, and feels special. You're included in the silence, and it's nice there.
• The mask. What mask? Oh, there's a mask, dudes. Isn't that the most terrifying aspect of a birthday clown? The grotesquely exaggerated features, done in colorful contours on a death-white face? I admit: I get shivers at the thought. People these days don'ta like-a the mask. What are they hiding? Who are they, really? WHY CAN'T THEY JUST LOOK NORMAL? Well, as Friend Patrick will attest, the traditions of masks are too numerous, wide-spread and intricate to address . . . in any one place, really. As to the horrid birthday-clown make-up, it is derived a great deal from commedia dell'arte, as well as other places. Time was, when anyone was going to tell a story with power, they'd use some kind of disguise. Masks were common-place in parties and festivals and ceremonies. Theatre just used that, and it has changed throughout the years. The birthday clown adopted Pierrot's white face, Dottore or a zanni's bulbous nose (originally red from drink) and merged it with the color scheme of an American circus of the 1800s. The effect is admittedly garish and disturbing. The mask, be it a commedia one, face paint or just a strap-on red nose, used to serve to free the performer to go to greater lengths to entertain his or her audience. The red nose is often referred to as "the mask that reveals," serving as it does to let it all hang out and expose a person in the most entertaining fashion. Birthday clowns, once again, seem to use it simply to advertise.
• The murders. In traditional clowning, the . . .. Wait. WHAT?! Murders? What kind of performance philosophy is this? I write "The murders" because, in researching this topic, I got sucked into a little reading about John Wayne Gacy, Jr., and that man was a scary S.O.B. He was, in addition to being a serial killer, a birthday clown: Pogo the Clown. This is not the fault of clowndom in general of course, any more than George W. Bush is the fault of Texans, or diseased howler monkeys. Still and all, the concept of a criminal clown predates Gacy. This summer, The Dark Knight will relaunch the iconic figure of the Joker, Batman's nemesis, and I suspect that this time his aberrant behavior will not be quite as disarming as Nicholson portrayed it. Terrifying, most likely it will be, even without the unthinkable recent demise of Mr. Ledger. I wish I could say that the figure of a murderous clown doesn't go back very far, but I'm afraid it does. The Punch & Judy puppetry of England has its roots in Italian commedia dell'arte, and the stories of P&J consist mainly of Punch offing a variety of other puppets. This is clearly a subject under its own heading. What more can I say than: Not all clowns are killers, just as not all killers are clowns.

The past week has for me been very clowny. I continue to read my Buster book. I've had two auditions (auditions themselves being very similar to the torment a clown experiences moment-to-moment [at least, my clown does]), and one of them required an original movement piece. To top it all off, I had a conference with the Exploding Yurts -- my little creative-encouragement group with a strange name -- regarding the draft of a screenplay for a clown film I'm writing. (Because struggling to become a renowned theatre actor just isn't frustrating enough.) I don't know why I'm turning to the clown in me so much these days. I suppose it could have something to do with working on that whole "what kind of work is MY kind of work" question I began asking somemonthsback.

And it seems I'm getting an answer. Or three.